Nearly a year ago, Connie Britton became a first-time mom when she adopted her son, Yoby, from Ethiopia. Opening up to Redbook about her life as a Hollywood mom, she jokes about how she's trying to start an adoption club with some of the other celebrities who have also adopted from Africa.

"Me and Angelina [Jolie] and Sandra Bullock and Mary-Louise Parker just get together every weekend, drink rosé, and talk about kids!" the actress laughs. "No, that is not the case. Not that I wouldn't love to get together with all of them and discuss their experiences. But there is a community of people who have adopted children from Ethiopia, and that's something I want to be a part of for sure. To me it's really important for my son to have a strong sense of that background."

The 45-year-old actress, who was briefly married in her 20s, is raising Yoby as a single mother — a challenge she was more than ready to tackle when the opportunity presented itself. "I always knew I wanted a child, and I always assumed I'd be doing it with a man," Britton, who is dating, confesses to the magazine. "Then my parents passed away within three years of each other. Right after that, a light bulb went off in my head and I thought, 'What am I waiting for?' I wasn't in a relationship at the time, but I thought, 'This is something I want to do. I can do it.'"

Britton, who shot to fame in the sports drama "Friday Night Lights" (she played the lovable Tami Taylor) and spent a bloody season on "American Horror Story," returns to TV this week in "Nashville," which is a show about the world of country music. Interestingly enough, she says she's found similarities between acting and parenting. "One thing that I tapped into very early on doing 'FNL' was that a lot of what it feels like to be a mother is that you feel like you have no idea what the hell you're doing," she explains. "That was true for me as an actor. ...And then at some point I realized, well, actually, that's exactly how a mother would be feeling. And now that I'm a mother, I realize the depth to which that's true."

On "Nashville," which co-stars Hayden Panettiere, we get to see — and hear — a new side of Britton. She plays a headlining country singer in the later stages of her career, who gets elbowed to the side to make room for a rising star. "We have an opportunity to show a woman who is self-made and successful and really trying to have it all, and the complexities and difficulties of it," notes Britton, who happens to do her own singing on the show. "We have the opportunity to show the sexiness and gorgeousness of a woman with experience and wisdom."